


Welcome to My World of Truth

by angelskuuipo



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, GFY, Gen, Gift Fic, Season 1 Finale, Songfic, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 17:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4928653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelskuuipo/pseuds/angelskuuipo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver is waiting for Felicity when she finally makes it home in the aftermath of the Undertaking.  Talking happens, and crying, and finally, sleeping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome to My World of Truth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dragonydreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonydreams/gifts).



> Disclaimer: Recognizable characters are not mine; never have been, never will be…damn it. The story, however, is. Please do not repost without my permission.
> 
> Written for the fantabulous dragonydreams. Happy Birthday, darlin’! I hope you had a swell one. I wish you much peace and happiness, now and always. This story…this is not what I set out to write. I wanted to write you birthday smut, but that didn’t happen. Mea culpa. I was driving today and Adam Lambert’s [Underneath](https://youtu.be/s3LwG8IRLQo) came on. Then this happened. I hope you like it, honey! Big thanks to Shanachie for the beta. Any remaining mistakes are on me.
> 
> Written: October 3, 2015  
> Word Count: 2,149

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Felicity stumbled with exhaustion as she unlocked her front door. She needed a shower in the worst way, but she wasn’t sure she could stay awake long enough to take one.

She was pretty sure this had been the worst night of her life.

She sniffed back tears and angrily wiped at her cheeks when they spilled over anyway. Dropping her keys in their bowl, she shuffled towards her bathroom and tried to think of anything but the last few hours.

It didn’t work.

All she could see in her mind’s eye was the Foundry collapsing around her and all she could think about were all the lives she’d failed to save. She knew better and had underestimated Malcolm Merlyn anyway. Hundreds of people were dead because she didn’t look hard enough.

Tommy was dead because of her.

She choked on a sob and barely caught herself against the wall in her hallway. She gave up, sank to the floor, and let the tears come. Oh, god, how could she ever face Oliver after this? There was no way he wouldn’t blame her for what happened. To make matters even worse, she didn’t even know if John was alive or not. They’d lost contact and she hadn’t been able to find him. If it weren’t for Detective Lance she would still be trapped in the Lair (and she would be forever grateful to him for not asking the questions he had so obviously wanted to. Plausible deniability for the win!). She didn’t know anything about her team, her _friends_.

She was useless.

Felicity had no idea how long she sat on the floor of her hallway, but once her tears subsided for the moment she wearily pushed herself up and trudged to the bathroom. She avoided looking in the mirror as she undressed and got the water going. She was running on fumes, but she would make whatever energy she had left last long enough to wash away the physical evidence of her failure.

She didn’t linger, even though the heat felt heavenly on her bruised body. Once she felt relatively clean she turned off the water and stepped out. She put her hair up in a towel and slipped into the robe on the back of the door. With a shuddering sigh she moved to her bedroom.

And promptly screamed bloody murder at the sight of a man in her bedroom. It took her far too long to realize it was Oliver standing there, his hood, jacket and shirt discarded, and blood oozing from a badly bandaged wound on his shoulder.

Hand clamped to her chest, as if she could contain her pounding heart, she yelled, “Holy shit! Oliver, what the hell?!”

He stared at her, the look on his face so lost that it brought tears to her eyes. God, she was going to need all the cucumbers if she kept this up. They already felt swollen; raw and gritty. She really didn’t need to cry anymore.

They continued to look at one another for who knows how long. She’d lost the ability to fathom time…whenever ago. She needed to sleep, but apparently that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

Was he here to kill her? She wouldn’t blame him, not really. She had failed the city after all. She didn’t want to die, but she wasn’t sure she could actually live with her failure either. Was that selfish? 

His voice startled her when he finally spoke. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

She frowned at him and he shrugged, wincing when it pulled at his wound. “Digg’s in the hospital. The manor and QC are covered in reporters and the Foundry is gone. I had to know you were okay.”

Felicity blinked at him. “Don’t you wish I’d died in the collapse?”

Oliver flinched so hard he staggered back until he hit her bedroom wall. He slid down gracelessly until he was sitting on the floor. When he looked up at her the pain in his eyes was almost her undoing. “Why would you say that?” he rasped.

She bit her lip. “Because I failed. I didn’t find the second device. I didn’t do my job and people died.” Her breathing hitched and she could feel the tears coming again, but she made herself say the words, “Tommy died because I didn’t do my job.”

Oliver closed his eyes and dropped his head. “Christ, Felicity. This isn’t on you. None of this is on you. You and Lance saved so many lives tonight. You did exactly what you were supposed to do. Malcolm Merlyn and my parents and whoever else had a hand in planning this attack are to blame. If my father had actually told me what was going on instead of giving me a cryptic goal and a supposedly blank notebook before he blew his brains out, things might have turned out differently. I want to blame myself for not figuring it out and stopping it sooner. I want to blame myself for not saving Tommy. I want to blame myself for so many things, but even I can recognize that we all did what we could. Doesn’t mean the guilt’s not going to eat at me, but we did what we could.” He looked up and pinned her with over-bright blue eyes and tear tracks on his face. “I don’t blame you.”

Felicity wiped her tears away and gave him a shaky smile. “Thank you, Oliver. I really needed to hear that.” He shifted and winced again. “Let me get my first aid kit and I’ll take care of your shoulder.”

Oliver started to protest, but subsided at her pointed look. He obediently shifted forward so she could ascertain the damage and she swallowed hard at the sight of the through and through wound.

“Were you shot?” she asked as she cleaned him up.

“No.”

“Do not go caveman on me right now, Oliver Queen. What happened?”

“I stabbed myself with an arrow to kill Malcolm.”

Felicity stopped what she was doing and fell back on her butt. She closed her eyes and breathed deep a few times. “Of course you did. Because that’s what you do. That was a perfectly acceptable course of action.”

“He had me in a chokehold and was about to break my neck. It seemed like the best option at the time.”

The blasé, matter of fact way he said that made Felicity laugh. If her laughter was tinged with a bit of hysteria, well, she didn’t really care. She was at the end of her rope.

She went back to stitching him up. “Then I’d say you made the right call.” She paused again and leaned her head on his arm. “Jesus, how is this our lives?”

She felt his hand on her back and looked up at him. He was grimacing in pain at the awkward position, but she knew he was stubborn enough not to move until he was ready.

“I’m sorry I got you into this.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “If I remember correctly, I volunteered.”

“You were innocent. I had no business exposing you to the likes of me. I have so much blood on my hands, Felicity. You don’t even know a fraction of the things I’ve done…”

“Stop it, Oliver. I’m not as innocent as you think. I’ve got a past, too. It might not include five years fighting to survive, but it’s not all sunshine and roses either. We’ve all got sins to atone for. Some are a little weightier than others, but we’ve all got them.”

He studied her for a few long moments before he settled back and let her resume her work. “You see the real me and you really don’t care, do you?” he asked, honestly curious about the answer.

“I see a man who has been through hell and survived. I see a man who has done what was necessary to make sure he lived to make it home again. I see a man who took on his father’s sins and tried to make them right. I see a man who thinks he’s a monster, but is one of the most human of humans I’ve ever met. Your perceived failures wouldn’t bother you so much if you didn’t have a good heart, Oliver. So yes, I see the real you and I like that person.” She gave him a half-hearted grin. “Even if you do drive me up a wall sometimes.”

He returned her smile and leaned in, pressing a chaste kiss to the corner of her mouth. She looked at him, wide-eyed, but didn’t say anything. She finished dressing the entry and exit wounds and methodically packed her supplies away. When she was done, she sat back and wondered what happened next.

“I don’t know if I can stay here in Starling City, Felicity.”

She considered that. “Do you really want to leave Thea alone right now?”

Oliver blinked at her, like he hadn’t even thought of his sister, and she raised her eyebrows at him.

He closed his eyes and thumped his head against the wall a few times. “Fuck.”

Felicity put her hand on his knee, offering silent comfort. “I get wanting to run. I really do, but she needs you right now.” She wasn’t sure she should say what was on the tip of her tongue, but it slipped out anyway. “I need you.”

Oliver opened his eyes and she caught her breath at the intensity of his gaze. “Why?”

She frowned at him. “What do you mean ‘why’?”

“Why do you need me? I’ve brought nothing but chaos into your life.”

She couldn’t quite put it into words. He wasn’t wrong. Her life had been a non-stop rollercoaster since he walked into her office with a shot-up laptop and lame ass cover story, but she also felt more alive than she had in years.

Finally, she shrugged and said, “Because you’re my friend and I don’t want to try to deal with this alone.”

He reached for her then and she went willingly, letting him pull her onto his lap. She made sure to avoid his injured shoulder, but she let him hold her. It was…nice to be held. She hadn’t realized how much she needed the contact.

He stroked her side and if they weren’t both beat all to hell she would be really tempted to see if they could take things further. It would probably be the stupidest thing she’d ever done, but part of her really wanted to lose herself in the physical for a few hours. She was almost certain Oliver would agree.

But they _were_ both beat all to hell and the last thing she wanted to do was complicate their friendship with sex. Sometimes being an adult sucked.

“Let’s go to bed,” she mumbled, her head still nestled under his chin.

Oliver’s hand paused on the upsweep. “Uh…”

She huffed, but stayed where she was. It was easier to talk if he couldn’t see her face. “To sleep, dumbass. Neither of us is up to anything more and even if we were, it would be a mistake right now. Emotionally fraught situations are never a good time to make life altering decisions.”

“Sleeping with me would be a life altering decision?”

Felicity just knew Oliver was laughing at her, even though she couldn’t see his face. She was quickly losing the battle to stay awake and didn’t care. “Having sex with you would be, yes. Sleeping with you right now means neither of us has to be alone with our nightmares.”

His arms tightened around her. “That…that would be a really good thing. Are we going to sleep here or are we going to make use of your very comfortable looking bed?”

“Mmmm, bed,” she mumbled, almost asleep.

She vaguely felt him press a kiss to the top of her head. “I’d carry you, but I’m not sure I can push up from the floor right now.”

Felicity grumbled, but managed to get to her feet. She held out her hand and helped Oliver up. She waved towards the bathroom and staggered to her bed. She managed to say, “Sweats in the closet. Mi casa es su casa,” before she faceplanted on her pillow. She was asleep almost immediately.

She didn’t know when Oliver came to bed, but when she woke up a few hours later with him wrapped around her, she felt safe and protected.

Nothing was fixed. At all. Not even close. But there was a more solid foundation between them than there had been. They’d both laid themselves bare and let each other see what was going on underneath the veneer of stability. They weren’t alone and that’s what would get them through the coming days.

Felicity drifted back to sleep with a small smile on her face.

-30-


End file.
